She pulled herself up to an easier position and leant out of the chair towards him. Speaking softly and with less malice, she said, ‘Promise you won’t fly at me, Caddie—no, promise …’
His mouth warped into a little grin.
‘First of all, you do know that it’s yours, don’t you? You aren’t going to insult me by thinking of me as the sort of old woman who plays ducks and drakes with codicils are you? I said you should have it and so you shall. That is a certainty. Only it belongs to me until the day I’m carried out of it. Then it comes to you. Now I’ll tell you what you should do—are you listening? When it comes to you, sell it.’
He started like a person who is nearer to the edge of a precipice than he had anticipated.
‘Sell … Copdock?’
‘Why not? Sell it and retire,’ she advised brutally. ‘You’re sixty aren’t you? Do you want to go on for ever?’
That did it. He turned on her with that feline indignation which could easily outstrip her own. She bowed her head under his torrential memories. At last they became too much for her and she broke in with,
‘I sometimes wonder how you can lose your temper with me when you stand to lose so very much more …’
She had her satisfaction in seeing his anxiety work itself up to his collar, a dull red flush creeping out of his shirt and up to his hair-line.
‘I have your word, Freda, you just gave it me,’ he said shakily.
‘I never thought the day would come when I’d ever be sorry for Minna,’ Miss Bellingham said abstractly. ‘But now I see that it would be quite easy for me to be. I think you are boring me.’
‘I’m sorry—terribly, terribly sorry.’
‘Let’s leave it at that!’
‘Very well.’
‘And begin again. And don’t imagine I’m bringing the subject up afresh just to be provoking. I have to make a decision—you understand? I’ve already kept Pauly waiting a whole week.’
‘A week? You never said …’
‘No, well, I’ve been thinking about it. You see, Caddie, I don’t fly off the handle. I’m only mad; I’m not unreasonable.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I’ve been saying, That it would be the best thing for Mr Brand—call him that, shall we—more businesslike—far and away the best thing.’
He watched her expertly, estimating by all the little involuntary twitches and starts of her body just how far he dare go. How much he could get away with. ‘For Sir Paul …’ he asked.
She drew herself up sharply at that.
‘For Mr Brand, Caddie, surely.’
‘You know, Freda,’ he said, rather as if he were giving advice to a romantically-inclined fifth-former, ‘there’s not one of us who is not without his dreams. And for those of us who are old, there is the recollection of them. We all want, or wanted to be poets and painters. I did myself when I was at Oxford. Perhaps I never told you, but I read Meredith with the best of them and spent good money on German oleographs of the Primavera to hang above my fireplace. I also sent long verses in the manner of Lascelles Abercrombie to the New English—or was it the Savoy? I forget. But it was all a phase, although my pride hardly allowed me to admit it. Couldn’t it be the same with Brand? Shouldn’t we keep our heads?—Romanticism, Freda—it’s so catching.’
‘And Dessy? Was that romanticism?’
‘Yes,’ he answered slowly and consideringly.
‘And me—I’m a romantic? Me, at my age?’
He plunged gallantly.
‘You are the greatest romantic of us all, Freda!’
Then he began to sneeze and complain, whacking pocket after pocket in a desperate search for his hankerchief. ‘My cold is much worse. I shouldn’t be here, should I. You’ll get it.’
‘It’s settled then,’ she said surprisingly.
‘Settled—what is?’
‘Richard’s future, of course! I take it that we’re not likely to put anything in the way if he should like the idea of working for Pauly? And now you can set about getting a properly qualified man in his place and start running Copdock according to this new idea of yours!’
‘What you don’t seem to realise, Freda,’ Mr Winsley said with enormous control, ‘is what I could do without your knowing it. Just because I come to you with my suggestions—my hopes, if you like—it doesn’t mean that I’m some sort of supplicant!’
She gave her loud, indecorous laugh and said, ‘Hoity-toity!’
‘It’s true. You know it.’
‘I’ve written to Pauly.’
He suppressed his indignation and replied in a thin cold tone, ‘How many times have we not had this kind of conversation, Freda? How often have we not discussed every aspect of a subject only to discover at the end that there is not the faintest hope of your preconceived notions being swayed? Since you have written a letter to Sir Paul, why ask me about it. Indeed, why ask me anything!’
‘Ah, but I haven’t posted it. Shall I? That’s the thing.’
‘Do. Why not? You are obviously all out to cut the ground from under young Brand’s feet. If you are determined to ruin him by pushing him in that direction….’
‘I’ll not have innuendo from you, Caddie! I take it that by “ground” you mean this school?’
‘Yes, this school,’ he said very deliberately, feeling for the first time in his life that he was standing up for his own property. Suddenly there was no longer any need for him to think of her—of anyone. Copdock was his. His passion for it made it so.
She pursued him with waspish enquiries.
‘What about his prospects, Caddie? Have you given any thought to them?’
He explained, but she wasn’t listening. Pursuing her own line of thought, she mused aloud in a confused mumble in which he picked out, ‘No—no; best for Pauly to ask him. Less peculiar if it comes from him. He could ask on Sunday. Richard could finish term at Easter. Let him off. More ordinary like that. Less collusive. Is that what I mean? No, not collusive at all. Where have my tablets gone to now? No? Blast. Caddie, where are my tablets?’
He handed them to her. They were on her cluttered little desk. ‘And then?’ he asked.
‘Then what?’
‘Our young Mr Brand will have to refuse, won’t he?’
‘Oh—why will he?’
‘Because whatever his failings he doesn’t happen to be a confidence trickster. What, apply for a post, get it, settle in—then throw it all up in a matter of weeks! No, Freda, our Mr Brand is hardly likely to do that! He’d be mad for one thing.’
‘Never mind the madness,’ she said. But the other things you mention—what are they?—only formalities. You might spoil your entire life just for the sake of doing what they call ‘the right thing.’ In fact, you would, Caddie; you’re the type. No, should the question arise—you know, Brand thinking that he’s letting us down—I shall make it absolutely plain that we are quite pleased for him to go.’
‘He’ll smell a rat,’ Mr Winsley sneered.
‘Why? Oh, I see,’ she said, staring at him hard. He was frigid. ‘I’ must be going, Freda. There are the reports to vet.’ At the door he turned and added simply, ‘Do let’s see reason in all this.’
She observed him unblinkingly.
‘Reason, Caddie—or your point of view?’
15
ON Easter Monday Richard walked the long way round from The Portway to Meridian House. The sea was massed in a solid cobalt wall tipped with coalers and minnow-like brigs. On a height stood St Prolixia’s, its grizzled tower partly eclipsed by the Meridian catalpa tree. Gulls made white slashes in the even blue. Although it was warm, there were few holiday-makers braving the beach, Lafney not being the kind of place to be taken in by a premature brush with summer. The trippers who were sitting at all crouched in shelters, but most of them packed the small coffee-shops made resentfully busy by the Bank Holiday. A playful wind made sudden skirmishes from the east and cracked the bright canvas of abandoned deck-chairs
like pistol shots. Feathery fleck stung Richard’s face. There were two narrow look-out towers on the sea-wall. Midway between them, and walking slowly in his direction, he saw Mary.
‘Hullo. I was just on my way. I suppose I’m late?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Early if anything. No, I just walked. I somehow thought you would be coming the sea way.’
‘Do you really fancy the marshes?’
‘Is that what we said?’
‘It is what you said.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. Do you know what I’d really like to do? I’d like to walk about in London through squares and side-streets—they’re always deserted on Bank Holidays—Berkeley Street, or Chelsea. Or, better still, those rather shabby literary streets behind Kingsway. Just walk on and on calmly reading plaques and knowing nobody.’
‘Would Ipswich do?’
‘Ipswich? Oh, my dear … Ipswich!’
‘Plaques and streets and strangers,’ he reminded her.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about the last. Anyway, it would mean ringing Mummy, who’ll think it odd to say the least.’
They drifted vaguely away from the fall and the hush of the sea. The morning train from Liverpool Street rushed past the golf course and gave a long isolated whoop. The sun went in and the temporary nature of the sea’s rash gaiety became at once apparent. Luxe, calme et volupte it had beguilingly suggested, but shallowly it proved. For only just beneath the sudden glitter were the cold, grey, workaday fathoms of the dull Northern waters. The North Sea is more than a waste; more than a barrier. It is the gigantic distillation of all European regret, a chilly waterway for the passage of even chillier doctrines. Its sound is negative. From the golden promontory of East Anglia to the desiccated coat of Scandinavia it mutters, ‘no … thou shalt not …’ Those who have lived by it for generations have perfected an aptitude for rejection. Its astringent winds are unforgiving and treat human carelessness unkindly. Its influence is just as strong as that of the Mediterranean, but in a reverse ratio. It has reined in the blood, checked enthusiasm and diluted the warm and compassionate Eastern faith to suit its own cool conventions. In its protestant strength it has become the exact complement to the tolerant southern waters; the icy bight against the lake of wine.
Geography has much to answer for. Usually when he was led to question things, Richard was inclined only to look within himself, but lately he had taken to seeing his personal problem stated in terms of air, bricks and mortar, dialect; the ingredients which made Lafney Lafney and set it apart from any other small seaside town with a pebble beach, three or four thousand inhabitants and a group of eccentrically segregated classes. Lafney, in fact, was beginning to have a closet-like effect on him. When he was away from it, it became a token of security. When he was home it almost suffocated him. The sea had always given him a rather thrilling kind of sadness. It had invented for him a melancholy which he’d welcomed at first, because it had seemed to him right at the time that anyone who wanted to write should also want to be a bit miserable. Now that he saw how ridiculous this was, he found that the sea-melancholy had become a habit too ingrained to break away from. To change his humour he would have to change his sea. Perhaps, he thought, taking a last look across the beach, it’s too late. Where ever I live now I’ll most likely be the same. Some people got away, adopting a climate, even if they still clung to their nationality. Sir Paul had, for although Suffolk born and bred, he had contrived to make himself as Italian as a Medici. There was not a drop of North Sea puritanism in Sir Paul’s veins. Mrs Crawford could sneer how she liked about what she called ‘arty ex-patriots’, but she and her kind could never understand that amongst them, Sir Paul at least had been truly baptised back into a broader, more generous European culture. All of which reminded Richard how that ever since that first snowy Sunday in the white drawing-room, Sheldon had acted on him like intellectual yeast.
Mary saw that he was gravely eyeing her. They were near Boot’s. An avalanche of holiday trifles; sunglasses, spools of film, soap, cosmetics, little brass ladies with clappers in their crinolines, indecent rubbery tubes and sepia view-cards spilt down in a flood. There was also a huge pile of gummed paper for people to stick on their windows to stop flying glass lacerating them if bombing began. Nodding her head towards this, Mary said,
‘Every day is like a last day. Although I don’t suppose such a thought occurs to most people. Look at them all laughing and eating buns! They’re like stoics on a day-trip refusing to believe that the next queue they join will lead to destruction.’
‘We’re not in the queue then?’ he asked, amused.
‘I wish I could believe that we were not. But at least we give some thought to what is likely to happen.’
‘Perhaps they aren’t as unconscious as we imagine.’
‘Oh they are, Richard—why you’ve only got to look at them!’
‘To be honest, I don’t given it much thought myself.’
She glanced at him obscurely. They had paused and were standing in the middle of the path, and the promenading holiday-makers were having to break their ranks and flow by on either side. The two of them made a sombre island in such a jolly river. The last half-an-hour had brought the last train-load in and all the residents out. The crowds jogged along, seeming to defeat enjoyment by the very effort they made to maintain it. In the gutter a trio of street musicians were playing ‘One Day My Prince Will Come’ on piano-accordions. A fair young man limped about and the pennies clanked grudgingly into his can. The mother-of-pearl facings on the instruments glittered and shone. Across the street, on the wall of the newly-erected cinema, a huge poster showed Anna Neagle, her cheeks bunched out on pads, in the film Sixty Glorious Years. A monoplane crackled boisterously in from the sea.
‘Let’s get away, if it’s only for a day or two,’ she said, plunging suddenly with something which had lain fallow in her mind for weeks.
Richard steered her out of the crowd before he replied, then he said, ‘I have always been willing, darling you should know that. There are no, well, difficulties if you like, with me.’
‘Do I make the difficulties then?’
‘Not make. Have.’
They were descending the gritty Town Steps.
‘My mother I suppose you mean? She’s been ill. She had a slight stroke.’
‘I know; I’m sorry.’
Mary hesitated at the verge of disloyalty to her mother, then said with a rush, ‘It’s been ghastly, Richard. Awful. Horrible! She insisted on staying in bed the whole winter. Then the news began to get worse and, well, she got excited about it and began to get better. You know what an old flag-waver she is. Well she got up and came down one morning just as though nothing had happened—and absolutely full of talk about A.R.P. and her organising this and that, and about it being such a pity that my father was dead…. Now there’s a meeting of something or other at Meridian every day and although it’s a quite terrible thing to say, I’m convinced that Mummy’s just longing for the war.’
His fingers gripped her arm, guiding her through the crowd.
‘How—how long have you got, Richard?’
‘School starts again on the second.’
He was cautious and she noticed it. ‘Then you’re free till then?’ she persisted.
He hesitated. ‘Not quite … I did promise I’d go on with the work at Sheldon.’
‘Oh——’
‘It’s only on Sunday,’ he hastened to add. ‘I can’t quite expect Sir Paul to give up what he’s doing just because Copdock’s on holiday, can I?’
‘Can’t you? You weren’t at Sheldon yesterday.’
‘Only because yesterday happened to be Easter Day. I heard a rumour that the Belle was going over. You can imagine the fuss at Copdock if she did. She’s not supposed to have stepped outside the School for the last ten years!’
‘I suppose we do have to talk about her and Copdock?’
Caught slightly off his guard, he said resentfully, ‘Sorry. Forgot yo
u didn’t like her. You don’t, do you?’
‘I’ve never even seen her, but I shouldn’t think I’d like her from what I’ve heard of her. Or, if it comes to that, her me!’
‘What would you say if I told you that she wants me to be Sir Paul’s secretary?’
Mary stopped dead.
‘You’d live there—at Sheldon?’
‘Indeed I should.’
‘And you’re going to …?’
‘It’s not completely fixed, but that’s the idea. That is why I’ve got to see Sir Paul. To discuss it.’ Misinterpreting her silence, he added, ‘Wonderful, isn’t it! And even if there is a war, a few months or years at Sheldon doing real literary work is going to help me a damn sight more than wasting my time at Copdock.’
Mary did not answer. It was all too unanswerable. Even more than his worldly blindness, Richard’s feckless aptitude for slipping into other people’s plans was beginning to make her feel sick. She didn’t see that for him the serious times had not yet arrived, that his dilettantism—like all dilettantism—sprang from the belief that life hadn’t really started and that there would be time enough and to spare to do all that he ought to do. But never now. It was always one day, some day….
Risking his anger she answered, ‘I shouldn’t, Richard. I—I just shouldn’t.’
He was heartily rude. ‘You weren’t asked,’ he said.
She swallowed this and repeated quietly, ‘I just shouldn’t—that’s all.’
They sank on a seat inscribed, ‘G.R.—M.R. 1910–1935’. Now there was a positive indication of summer beating up momentarily from the warm oak slats and from the salty concrete. Litter—crisp-bags, cigarette cartons, bits of newspaper—was urged along by a ground-raking breeze. Far away the street musicians played the ‘Minstrel Boy’. They sat near to each other, their need to be together overcoming their differences. A little gap existed between their bodies, but it was face-saving, fraudulent and merely emphasized the attraction they had for each other which was fastly resolving itself into something mindless and physical. Mary, feeling hollow and insubstantial, as though she had missed a meal, noted Richard’s hands spread heavily, one on each thigh. He looked at the sea through screwed-up lashes. It was at that moment—she recalled it often afterwards, vividly and unmistakably—that her idea of marrying him died. And not even with grief, but more with a sense of limitless relief.
A Treasonable Growth Page 30
